'Beauty and the Beast' is Just Beastly

'Beauty and the Beast' is Just Beastly

The young network, The CW, with shows aimed at a young audience, is not entirely stupid to assume that another drama based in the realms of the supernatural mixed with fighting the bad guys, and all tied up with a central love story, might be popular. However, though not entirely stupid, it isn't necessarily the most astute of decisions for the network bosses. Film, television and literature are all completely saturated with vampires, werewolves, witches and fairytales at the moment, so 'Beauty and the Beast starring Smallville's Kristin Kreuk, their new show, would need to be something extra-special to stand out among the crowd. It's not.

'Beauty and the Beast''s central character is 'Cat' (Kreuk), whose mother she saw murdered as a teenager but miraculously saved from the same fate by a mystery creature. The creature turns out to be the 'beast' of the title, otherwise known as Vincent, played by Jay Ryan, whose DNA was changed to make him into a super-soldier while he was in the army. Very Dog Soldiers. Their lives end up, of course, being tangled up and they fall for each other, while Cat has a string of other suitors that hover around her in her job as a detective.

Reviews of CW's new supernatural drama (the genre seems to somewhat saturate the channel) have been almost mixed. Although the quality and appeal of the show is deemed by almost everyone as 'just bad' (as Newsday.com put it), but the Hollywood Reporter seems to utterly love its utter lack of redeeming features. Indeed, it is that lack that the Hollywood Reporter loved! Writing for the HR Tim Goodman said “It is, in a word, awesome. In two words: awesomely hilarious.” In an incredibly condescending 2nd person speech, figuratively speaking to CW he said “I love your crazy, optimistic world view - which is basically a dream world of super hot people mimicking what normal people do in the real world...You also --and bless you for this - are tragically, hilariously unaware of your own lack of self-awareness.” Though it's important to let Goodman know that it's not nice to speak to children like this, we simply can't disagree. He did, however, praise Kreuk not only for her astounding beauty, but also for her acting skill, saying that she “is a good actress who deserves better material.”

All these dramas always seem to have a beast, or werewolf, or other sort of creature, always around to save the day, the question we are begging is when will there be something to save TV from such terrible programming?